1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to hiking, skiing, snowboarding, or traveling in snow and more particularly relates to enabling the use of ski poles in soft, deep snow to regain or maintain balance or footing.
2. Description of the Related Art
When hiking, skiing or traveling through snow, travelers often experience difficulties and dangers associated with soft, deep snow. Snow may accumulate to be deeper than the height of a grown adult and may be soft enough that a human would sink over his or her head in snow and find it difficult to get air. In addition, the cold temperature, quick loss of heat, and extreme struggle necessary to get out of deep powder can lead to delay in travels, extreme exhaustion, or even death. Even soft snow with depths much less than the height of a human can necessitate extreme effort to travel and often cause dangers.
Often individuals who travel on snow use snow traversing devices to make it easier to stay on top of the snow and lower the energy that must be expended to travel even small distances. These devices generally operate by spreading the weight of the user over a larger surface area than would be available from the soles of the feet alone. Some of those most well known in the art include snowshoes, skis, and snowboards. For example, snowshoes have a much greater surface area than a normal shoe or boot. This spreads an individual's weight over an increased area of snow and allows for greater “flotation” on the surface. The shoes are also shaped generally with a curved up tip in the front which reduces drag as an individual walks. The increased area and curved up tip are very common to snow traversing devices including snowshoes, skis, snowboards, and the like. These features allow for extremely reduced energy requirements to travel a given distance when compared with travel on normal shoes only. So long as the user remains on his or her feet the devices help the individuals to remain on or near the surface of the snow.
However, given that the snow traversing devices are much different from normal shoes worn by individuals when walking or traveling, and given that the terrain upon which an individual is walking can be very unpredictable, it can be difficult to maintain balance. Individuals often fall when using snow traversing devices. Thus, it often is necessary for an individual to steady himself or stand after a fall using his arms and poles. The poles may allow an individual to maintain balance when he would otherwise fall by holding onto one end of the pole and pushing the distal end into the ground or another hard surface.
In deep and soft snow, however, the poles provide little or no assistance because there are no hard surfaces accessible to the individual. Pushing the distal end of a pole into the snow is useless because is simply sinks into the snow. Although many ski poles have baskets on the end to increase surface area, the surface area is usually far too little to make any difference. The problem is that a basket large enough to provide sufficient support is unwieldy and awkward. Thus, snow travelers tend to make do with smaller baskets and little or no support for the upper body when in deep snow.